The need for energy efficient and clean-running vehicles has existed for many years. This urgency is constantly reenforced by higher fuel prices, dwindling fuel supplies, and reports of dire environmental effects of internal combustion engine exhaust. Much of the popular effort directed to solving these problems includes increasing the efficiency of internal combustion engines thereby resulting in cars with greater gas mileage.
One area of effort in seeking fuel efficient vehicles is in the hybrid type of cars. Generically speaking, these cars combine gas and electric motors. Those motors compliment each other to obtain efficiencies. In some of these types of cars, small flywheels are used to recharge the electric batteries that assist in the drive of the car. These flywheels are typically actuated only during the braking of the vehicle. The use of the flywheel is effectively for this recharging purpose only.
A still further type of technology used in connection with efficient and environmentally friendly cars is a flywheel-driven vehicle where the rotation of the flywheel is created by an electric motor and/or an internal combustion engine. In the alternative of an electric motor driving a flywheel, there is typically included a recharging feature that recharges the battery that drives the electric motor upon deceleration of the vehicle. Hypothetically, this may be seen to be very efficient. The difficulty is in the actual execution of the concept. One problem is the use of a single battery or energy source that must run the motor to rotate the flywheel and be recharged.